We begin to see now that the economic and ideological situations of the masses need not necessarily coincide, and that, indeed, there can be a considerable cleavage between the two. The economic situation is not directly and immediately converted into political consciousness. If this were the case, the social revolution would have been here long ago. In keeping with this dichotomy of social condition and social consciousness, the investigation of society must proceed along two different lines. Notwithstanding the fact that the psychic structure derives from the economic existence, the economic situation has to be comprehended with methods other than those used to comprehend the character structure: the former has to be comprehended socio-economically, the latter bio-psychologically.
Let us illustrate this with a simple example: When workers, who are hungry, owing to wage-squeezing, go on strike, their act is a direct result of their economic situation. The same applies to the man who steals food because he is hungry. That a man steals because he is hungry, or that workers strike because they are being exploited, needs no further psychological clarification. In both cases ideology and action are commensurate with economic pressure. Economic situation and ideology coincide with one another.
Reactionary psychology is wont to explain the theft and the strike in terms of supposed irrational motives; reactionary rationalizations are invariably the result. Social psychology sees the problem in an entirely different light: what has to be explained is not the fact that the man who is hungry steals or the fact that the man who is exploited strikes, but why the majority of those who are hungry don't steal and why the majority of those who are exploited don't strike. Thus, social economy can give a complete explanation of a social fact that serves a rational end, i.e., when it satisfies an immediate need and reflects and magnifies the economic situation.
The social economic explanation does not hold up, on the other hand, when a man's thought and action are inconsistent with the economic situation, are irrational, in other words. The vulgar Marxist and the narrow-minded economist, who do not acknowledge psychology, are helpless in the face of such a contradiction. The more mechanistically and economistically oriented a sociologist is, the less he knows about man's psychic structure, the more he is apt to fall prey to superficial psychologism in the practice of mass propaganda.
Instead of probing and resolving the psychic contradictions in the individuals of the masses, he has recourse to insipid Couelsm or he explains the nationalistic movement on the basis of a 'mass psychosis'. Hence, the line of questioning of mass psychology begins precisely at the point where the immediate socio-economic explanation hits wide of the mark. Does this mean that mass psychology and social economy serve cross purposes? No. For thinking and acting on the part of the masses contradictory to the immediate socio-economic situation, i.e., irrational thinking and acting are themselves the result of an earlier, older socio-economic situation.
One is wont to explain the repression of social consciousness by so-called tradition. But no investigation has been made as yet to determine just what 'tradition' is, to determine which psychic elements are moulded by it. Narrow-minded economy has repeatedly failed to see that the most essential question does not relate to the workers' consciousness of social responsibility (this is self-evident!) but to what it is that inhibits the development of this consciousness of responsibility.
Ignorance of the character structure of masses of people invariably leads to fruitless questioning. The Communists, for example, said that it was the misdirected policies of the Social Democrats that made it possible for the fascists to seize power. Actually this explanation did not explain anything, for it was precisely the Social Democrats who made a point of spreading illusions.
In short, it did not result in a new mode of action. That political reaction in the form of fascism had 'befogged', 'corrupted' and 'hypnotized' the masses is an explanation that is as sterile as the others. This is and will continue to be the function of fascism as long as it exists. Such explanations are sterile because they fail to offer a way out. Experience teaches us that such disclosures, no matter how often they are repeated, do not convince the masses; that, in other words, social economic inquiry by itself is not enough.
Wouldn't it be closer to the mark to ask what was going on in the masses that they could not and would not recognize the function of fascism? To say that 'The workers have to realize ...' or 'We didn't understand ...' does not serve any purpose. Why didn't the workers realize, and why didn't they understand? The questions that formed the basis of discussion between the Right and the Left in the workers' movements are also to be regarded as sterile. The Right contended that the workers were not predisposed to fight; the Left, on the other hand, refuted this and asserted that the workers were revolutionary and that the Right's statement was a betrayal of revolutionary thinking.
Both assertions, because they failed to see the complexities of the issue, were rigidly mechanistic. A realistic appraisal would have had to point out that the average worker bears a contradiction in himself; that he, in other words, is neither a clear-cut revolutionary nor a clear-cut conservative, but stands divided. His psychic structure derives on the one hand from the social situation (which prepares the ground for revolutionary attitudes) and on the other hand from the entire atmosphere of authoritarian society - the two being at odds with one another.
It is of decisive importance to recognize such a contradiction and to learn precisely how that which is reactionary and that which is progressive-revolutionary in the workers are set off against one another. Naturally, the same applies to the middle-class man. That he rebels against the 'system' in a crisis is readily understandable. However, notwithstanding the fact that he is already in an economically wretched position, the fact that he fears progress and becomes extremely reactionary is not to be readily understood from a socio-economic point of view. In short, he too bears a contradiction in himself between rebellious feelings and reactionary aims and contents.
We do not, for instance, give a full sociological explanation of a war when we analyse the specific economic and political factors that are its immediate cause. In other words, it is only part of the story that the German annexation ambitions prior to 1914 were focused on the ore mines of Briey and Longy, on the Belgian industrial centre, on the extension of Germany's colonial possessions in the Near East; or that Hitler's imperial interests were focused on the oil wells of Baku, on the factories of Czechoslovakia, etc.
To be sure, the economic interests of German imperialism were the immediate decisive factors, but we also have to put into proper perspective the mass psychological basis of world wars; we have to ask how the psychological structure of the masses was capable of absorbing the imperialistic ideology, to translate the imperialistic slogans into deeds that were diametrically opposed to the peaceful, politically disinterested attitude of the German population. To say that this was due to the 'defection of the leaders of the Second International' is insufficient.
Why did the myriad masses of the freedom-loving and anti-imperialistic oriented markers allow themselves to be betrayed? The fear of the consequences involved in conscientious objection accounts only for a minority of cases. Those who went through the mobilization of 1914 know that various moods were evident among the working masses. They ranged from a conscious refusal on the part of a minority to a strange resignedness to fate (or plain apathy) on the part of very broad layers of the population, to the point of clear martial enthusiasm, not only in the middle classes but among large segments of industrial workers also.
The apathy of some as well as the enthusiasm of others was undoubtedly part of the foundations of war in the structure of the masses. This function on the part of the psychology of the masses in both world wars can be understood only from the sex-economic point of view, namely that the imperialistic ideology concretely changed the structures of the working masses to suit imperialism. To say that social catastrophes are caused by 'war psychoses' or by 'mass befogging' is merely to throw out phrases. Such explanations explain nothing. Besides it would be a very low estimation of the masses to suppose that they would be accessible to mere befogging.
The point is that every social order produces in the masses of its members that structure which it needs to achieve its main aims. No war would be possible without this psychological structure of the masses. An essential relation exists between the economic structure of society and the mass psychological structure of its members, not only in the sense that the ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling class, but, what is even more important for the solving of practical questions of politics, the contradictions of the economic structure of a society are also embedded in the psychological structure of the subjugated masses. Otherwise it would be inconceivable that the economic laws of a society could succeed in achieving concrete results solely through the activities of the masses subjected to them.
To be sure, the freedom movements of Germany knew of the so-called 'subjective factor of history' (contrary to mechanistic materialism, Marx conceived of man as the subject of history, and it was precisely this side of Marxism that Lenin built upon); what was lacking was a comprehension of irrational, seemingly purposeless actions or, to put it another way, of the cleavage between economy and ideology. We have to be able to explain how it was possible for mysticism to have triumphed over scientific sociology.
This task can be accomplished only if our line of questioning is such that a new mode of action results spontaneously from our explanation. If the working man is neither a clear-cut reactionary nor a clear-cut revolutionary, but is caught in a contradiction between reactionary and revolutionary tendencies, then if we succeed in putting our finger on this contradiction, the result must be a mode of action that offsets the conservative psychic forces with revolutionary forces. Every form of mysticism is reactionary, and the reactionary man is mystical.
To ridicule mysticism, to try to pass it off as 'befogging' or as 'psychosis', does not lead to a programme against mysticism. If mysticism is correctly comprehended, however, an antidote must of necessity result. But to accomplish this task, the relations between social situation and structural formation, especially the irrational ideas that are not to be explained on a purely socio-economic basis, have to be comprehended as completely as our means of cognition allow.